JUDITH FREEMAN is the author of The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved. She is a fiction writer, essayist, and critic. Her work has been published in The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

RICHARD RAYNER is the author of A Bright and Guilty Place about the murderer of Los Angeles underworld figure Charles H. Crawford. He has published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post.

HECTOR TOBAR is the author of The Barbarian Nurseries, a tale of modern Southern California, a New York Times Notable Book for 2011. He is a proud native of Los Angeles, and for a decade served as the National and Foreign Correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.